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Pema Chodron Quotes

All Quotes Acceptance Acting Addiction Appreciation Attitude Awakening Awareness Belief Bravery Buddhism Certainty Challenges Change Character Children Choices Clarity Commitment Compassion Confusion Curiosity Desire Determination Disappointment Drama Earth Ego Empathy Energy Enlightenment Experience Fear Feelings Finding Yourself Freedom Giving Giving Up Grief Happiness Healing Heart Honesty Humanity Hurt Identity Ignorance Insecurity Inspirational Inspiring Journey Joy Justice Karma Kindness Learning Letting Go Life Loneliness Meditation Mindfulness Opportunity Pain Peace Peace Of Mind Perfection Perspective Pleasure Prejudice Quality Reality Resentment Revenge Running Sadness Sleep Sorrow Spirituality Struggle Suffering Teaching Train Training Understanding Waiting Warrior Water Wisdom

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Life, Spiritual, Learning

Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.85, Shambhala Publications

The next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering—yours, mine, and that of all living beings.

Change, Encouraging, Spiritual

You are the sky. Everything else - it’s just the weather.

Uplifting, Rainy Day, Sky

"Your Spacious Self: Clear the Clutter and Discover Who You Are". Book by Stephanie Bennett Vogt, May 15, 2007.

Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.

Curiosity, Greater

It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.

Buddhist, Pain, Attitude

Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.

Kindness, World, Flood

"Practicing Peace in Times of War". Book by Pema Chödrön, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2007.

Difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into your lousy habitual patterns, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you.

Irritation, Choices, Rawness

"Pema Chödrön and Jack Kornfield talk "The Wondrous Path of Difficulties". Interview with Michael Krasny, www.lionsroar.com. 2005.

We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds. (36)

Escaping, Mind, Monsters

Loving kindness towards ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. It means we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

Kindness, Crazy, Jealous

Times are difficult globally; awakening is no longer a luxury or an ideal. It’s becoming critical. We don’t need to add more depression, more discouragement, or more anger to what’s already here. It’s becoming essential that we learn how to relate sanely with difficult times. The earth seems to be beseeching us to connect with joy and discover our innermost essence. This is the best way that we can benefit others.

Essence, Luxury, Joy

All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.

Needs, Knows, Wide

Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.

Suffering, Causes, Happenings

Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.

Obstacles, Stuck, Teach

What you do for yourself, any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself, will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. What you do for yourself, you’re doing for others, and what you do for others, you’re doing for yourself.

Honesty, Kindness, World

Feel the feelings and drop the story.

Feelings, Stories, Feels

There's nothing more important on our spiritual path than developing gentleness to oneself.

Spiritual, Important, Path

I can't overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.

Thinking, Wish, Accepting

"You Are Worthy of Love" by Lodro Rinzler, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 16, 2013.

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

Relationship, Real, Compassion

Pema Chodron (2003). “Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion”, p.73, Shambhala Publications

We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.

Beautiful, Hurt, Children

Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.65, Shambhala Publications

We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good. We don’t want to be wrong because then we’ll feel bad. But we could be more compassionate toward all these parts of ourselves. The whole right and wrong business closes us down and makes our world smaller. Wanting situations and relationships to be solid, permanent, and graspable obscures the pith of the matter, which is that things are fundamentally groundless.

Our World, Feel Good, Want

One way to practice staying present is to simply sit still for a while and listen. For one minute, listen to the sounds close to you. For one minute, listen to the sounds at a distance. Just listen attentively.

Buddhist, Distance, Practice

Pema Chodron (2009). “Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears”, p.19, Shambhala Publications

We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

Choices, Scare, Circumstances

Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.3, Shambhala Publications

In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity. It manifests as inquisitiveness , as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness. It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure who we are, or who anyone else is, either.

Wisdom, Buddhist, Humor

Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.26, Shambhala Publications

We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. (10)

Grief, Fall, Healing

Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.11, Shambhala Publications

Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.

Running, Needs, Helping

Pema Chodron (2006). “Practicing Peace in Times of War”, p.71, Shambhala Publications

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